Archive for 2010

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IT Leader Start-Up Issues: What Have You Gotten Yourself Into?

Thursday, March 11th, 2010
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IT Leaders In New Positions Need To Take The Time To Do An Assessment

IT Leaders In New Positions Need To Take The Time To Do An Assessment

Every IT Shop Is Different

In the life of an IT Leader, there will come the day that you find yourself in a new position. You might be working for the same company and just be in a different role or you might be starting a new job – no matter, the challenge is the same. Where do you start? It turns out that doing nothing right off the bat might be the right idea…

Doing An Assessment Of Your Team

When you find yourself in a new IT Leader position, you might be tempted to do what many of us have done in the past – make some noise. We’ve all see others do this before: almost immediately upon assuming a new position, they do a reorganization or some such action just to show that they are going to “shake things up”. That’s all fine and good, but it really doesn’t accomplish anything.

Instead, your time would be better spent doing an assessment of the IT team that you’ve just inherited. To use the popular terminology of the day, this needs to be a 360-degree assessment of both those people who will be on your team as well as the people that you will now be working for.

What you’re going to be looking for is to develop a good understanding of how things are right now. You might be overflowing with things that you want to accomplish (or you might have been told what you will have to accomplish), but now is not the time to be making changes before you know what is going on.

You’re not going to find what you need written down anywhere, instead you’ve got a lot of talking to do. Your situational assessment needs to cover a lot of ground. Specifically you’re going to want to know about the following four areas:

  1. The IT ecosystem (hardware, network, communications, endpoints, etc.)
  2. Applications (business and support)
  3. Corporate organization and hierarchy
  4. Processes and procedures for common IT tasks

Results Of An IT Team Assessment

As you can probably guess by now, an IT assessment is not something that you can do overnight. It’s going to take some focused effort to uncover the information that you’re going to need.

What you should be looking to assemble out of all of this data collection are a set of key indicators that will tell you where you need to be spending your time. Each one of the areas that you’ve collected information on can probably by now be broken down into an additional level of detail: specific hardware systems (e.g. storage), specific applications, etc. Each of these IT components will have their own status.

This status in its simplest form can be thought of as being a traffic light: red, yellow, or green. The green status areas can safely be ignored for now – they are under control. Things get more interesting when you start to take a look at the yellow and red areas.

Clearly the red areas need immediate attention. However, it’s the yellow areas that will provide you with the greatest value for having done the whole assessment task. These are the areas that while they may be under control for now, have the potential to “go red” and quickly turn into a problem that could consume your hours, days, or even weeks.

What All Of This Means For You

When an IT leader is placed into a new position, his or her first actions can often set the stage for their long term success. Starting things off by taking actions just to look like you are doing something won’t help – it may do more harm than good.

Instead what you need to do is to take the time to do an assessment of your new IT environment. This will require you to look both up and down the company hierarchy. You’ll be trying to understand how all of the components of the IT department fit together (or don’t!)

A well done IT assessment will provide you with a clear roadmap on where you need to be spending your time. The areas that are either not doing well or just getting by are where you’ll need to be spending your time. Focus your time and talents here and you’ll be able to shine in your position.

Question For You: What do you think the most important thing that you can do is when you are just starting a new IT position?

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What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

In order to be successful as an IT Leader (no matter where you are at in the company’s management hierarchy), you’re going to have to do what you are told. Well, wait a minute, maybe I should phrase that differently. How about something like this: you are going to have to find out what they want you to do and then you are going to have to do it?

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AccIT Life Just Got Better For iPhone/Andriod/BB Users

Saturday, March 6th, 2010

Loyal Readers,

It has been brought to my attention that the AccIT blog’s appearance on touch-based smart phones was, shall we say, poor at best.

I think that I may have found a way to solve this problem. I’ve installed some new software that should change the AccIT into an iPhone application “looking” site, complete with Ajax loading articles and effects, when viewed from an iPhone, iPod touch, Android or BlackBerry touch mobile device.

As with all great experiments, we’re going to have to see how this goes. If you’ve got one of these devices do me a favor and check the site out and then post a comment to let me know how it looks — you should be able to switch between the old (“mobile unfriendly”) look & feel and the new (“mobile friendly”) look & feel.

Thanks for all of you help in making the AccIT better!

- Dr. Jim Anderson

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How Do You Prevent A Staffing Disaster Before It Happens?

Thursday, March 4th, 2010
Image Credit If You Are Prepared, Then You’ll Be Able To Prevent An Accident

If You Are Prepared, Then You’ll Be Able To Prevent An Accident

The Coming Disaster In Your IT Department

What do you think the mood of your IT team is right now? Poor? Downright bad? If your workplace is like most businesses out there right now, your team is still reeling from all of the layoffs, hiring freezes, pay cuts, etc. If nothing else, there has been a lingering sense of dread that has been in the air for the better part of two years. What do you need to be doing?

The Scope Of The Problem

There’s nothing physically wrong with your team, they are just really, really stressed out. What this means is that their creativity and productivity are probably at all time lows. You’re going to need to step in and do something about this situation.

I can almost hear you now: “I just don’t have time to do this right now.” Well guess what, you had better start to find the time. Otherwise you are going to find yourself buried in a wave of interviews as you try to fill all of the open positions in your department when everyone leaves.

The Conference Board has done a survey of 5,000 U.S. households (your team may not have been part of the survey, but the results probably still apply) and the results showed that only 45% were currently happy with their jobs. You’ve got a problem on you hands.

Steps You Can Take Now To Avoid Problems Later

You’ve got no budget, you’ve got no open req’s, what’s an IT manager to do when you need to cheer up your team? The good news is that there are a lot of low-cost, no-cost things that you can do that will save you much grief later on:

  • Job Titles: What are the titles of your staff? They are probably pretty boring. One thing that you can do that costs no money is to look into upgrading their titles – titles only, no promotions. Yes, you’d have to work with HR to do this, but the joy of going from “Systems Engineer IV” to “Senior Systems Engineer” can be absolutely amazing.
  • Work Time Options: Is your current team working a forced 9-5 work day? Loosing up on this can be a great no-cost way to pump some life back into the department. Yes, the work still needs to be done and yes, the company still needs to get value for the paycheck that it’s handing out; however, allowing your staff to determine when they work (including both nights and weekends) can go a long way to boosting morale and productivity. A nice side benefit of doing this is that it creates an almost entrepreneurial feeling and all of a sudden everyone becomes more willing to help each other out.
  • Bonuses: Remember when people used to get raises that were more than the cost of living? Well even though those days seem to long gone, one thing that you can do is to talk with HR and get your hands on some bonus money. Once you’ve got it, set up a bonus incentive program and just watch how everyone suddenly becomes motivated.
  • 1-on-1 Meetings: This may be the simplest of all the things that you could do – start taking the time to listen. Set up a time once a week where you’ll turn off the phone and the Instant Messaging and just talk with each staff member individually. This is a great chance for them to blow off steam, share their great new idea, or just have a chat with you. It doesn’t have to be too long – 15 minutes will do just fine.

What All Of This Means For You

As the global economy starts to improve, you as an IT Leader are going to have to start taking steps to make your beaten down staff feel special once again. If you don’t do this, then when the job market picks up, they are going to leave you.

Many of the most effective things that you can do involve low-cost or no-cost actions. Things like changing job titles, becoming more flexible with work times, or even just taking the time to listen better would all have positive results.

No matter what you decide to do, make sure that you do something. There is nothing more important for you to be spending your time on than making sure that your talented and experienced staff stay on board with you.

Question For You: In your company, what would the easiest thing be for you to do in order to boost your team’s morale?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental IT Leader Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

In the life of an IT Leader, there will come the day that you find yourself in a new position. You might be working for the same company and just be in a different role or you might be starting a new job – no matter, the challenge is the same. Where do you start? It turns out that doing nothing right off the bat might be the right idea…

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IT Leaders Need To Know What Their Company’s Goals Are

Thursday, February 25th, 2010
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You Can’t Score If You Don’t Know What The Goals Are

You Can’t Score If You Don’t Know What The Goals Are

As an IT leader you’ve got a lot to do. As though it wasn’t enough to stay on top of your staff keeping them happy, engaged, and productive, you are also constantly working to stay on top of all of that changing technology (can anyone say “new release”?) It turns out that you have an additional task that you might not be taking the time to do: figuring out where your company is trying to get to.

Why Knowing The Goals Is Important

How many of those “corporate” emails have arrived in your inbox this week so far? You know the ones that I’m talking about: they talk about the quarterly profits, some clever words that your CEO / COO / CFO / CIO said that got quoted in some trade journal, etc. Did you take the time to read it? Probably not – your too busy doing real IT work.

It turns out that you should take the time to read these emails. The reason is because this is how the company is telling you where they are trying to go as a company. Sure you might be working shoveling coal down in the IT boiler room of the company, but you have a vested interest in where the ship is sailing to because at the very least if it hits a rock, you’ll be affected too.

The leaders of your company work for the people who own the company. This means that the company has to make money or else the leaders will be replaced. How they plan on going about making that money is what you really care about. In order to hold on to their jobs, your management needs to be successful at almost any cost. This means that their goals need to be your goals.

How To Find Out What Your Company’s Goals Are

If we can all agree that knowing what your company is trying to do is important, then we can move on to trying to answer the really big question: just how can an IT Leader go about getting your hands on this type of information? It turns out that it is both easy and hard to do.

The easy part of this is to do some reading. Depending on whether your company is a public company or is privately held, there will be either more or less written information available to you. Things like quarterly reports and annual reports, although dry at times, do make for great reading if you are an IT Leader who wants to know where your company is headed.

Now about those emails that you’ve been getting. Sure, any one of the corporate emails that we all get probably isn’t all that important by itself. However, when you take them all together they can tell you a very interesting story.

Your senior management can’t actually accomplish any of the goals that they set for the company by themselves. They need your help. I tend to look upon those corporate emails as a desperate plea for assistance by management. The tricky part is that they generally can’t come out and say that their jobs depend on you helping them accomplish the company’s goals, instead they have to use clever wording that hides their pleas.

What To Do With This Knowledge

Once you’ve done your reading, listened to any speeches that your senior management has given, and generally come to an understanding of just what the company is trying to accomplish and where they are trying to get to, the big question is what now?

In order to move your career forward, you need to actually use the information that you’ve uncovered. The trick here is that you need to use it in a visible way. As you work on IT projects and participate in IT meetings, you’d like to become known as the person who is always asking the question “how does this help us to reach our company goals?” Sure, it might get to be a bit redundant over time, but the word will get out that you actually know what the company is trying to do and this can be a great career booster.

Just keeping everyone else on track is not enough, you’ve got to do more. Specifically those high-level company goals won’t exactly translate into specific IT project actions. This means that you need to step up and help to interpret the goals into specific IT actions that people on your team need to take. Depending on the goal, the actions may relate to reducing or avoiding costs, improving efficiency, etc.

What All Of This Means For You

We all feel that we are drowning in too much information already; however, it turns out that we still have one additional job that we need to be doing. The company that we work for has goals and it turns out that IT Leaders can play a big role in seeing that these goals happen.

In order to help the company, IT Leaders need to first make sure that they understand just exactly what the company’s goals are. Next they need to make sure that they let everyone else know that the goals are important. Finally, within an IT Leader’s team, real actions need to be taken in order to translate high-level company goals into specific IT tasks.

If we can view company goals as not being a bothersome distraction, and instead start to view them as a request for assistance that only we can provide, then change can happen. Your career is tied to how successful your company is and helping the company to achieve its goals is one way to be successful.

Question for you: where would you go to learn what your company’s real goals for this year are?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental IT Leader Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

What do you think the mood of your IT team is right now? Poor? Downright bad? If your workplace is like most businesses out there right now, your team is still reeling from all of the layoffs, hiring freezes, pay cuts, etc. If nothing else, there has been a lingering sense of dread that has been in the air for the better part of two years. What do you need to be doing?

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Oh, Oh – What To Do When You Don’t Get That Promotion

Thursday, February 18th, 2010
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What Should You Do If You Fall Off The Career Ladder?

What Should You Do If You Fall Off The Career Ladder?

Things are tough all over. If you were counting on getting a promotion this year, you might want to scale your hopes back just a bit. A lot of IT Leaders are discovering that their career plans are having to be put on hold. Maybe we should spend some time talking about what you should do now…

The Root Of The Problem

Have you noticed just how far down the U.S. stock market has dropped over the last couple of years? Since most of the baby boomer generation that is currently working in IT has their retirement funds tied up in stocks, they’ve seen their dreams of a well funded retirement take a hit. What this means is that they won’t be retiring any time soon.

What this means for all other IT Leaders is that the normal process of IT staff retiring each year and opening up senior management positions that are then filled by junior IT staff won’t be happening this year. Dang!

The folks over at Watson Wyatt Worldwide Inc. have done a survey of more than 2,200 U.S. employees and they’ve found that 44% of workers who are over 50 plan on postponing their retirement. Just to make things even worse, about half of these folks are now planning on working at least three years longer than they had originally planned on.

The Promotion Problem

So let’s talk frankly here: no matter what level your IT career is currently at, you are going to be blocked. Just to make things even worse, the experts are telling us that we shouldn’t expect promotions to come back any time soon.

So what should you do? Quit? In this economy? I don’t think so. Instead we should take a look and see if we can come up with a different solution.

As always, if you are expecting a promotion and you don’t get it, you need to take a look at the underlying reasons for you not getting the promotion. If you determine that your promotion was postponed because of either the company’s economic situation is poor or because there is a human logjam before you, then you still have hope.

Now you’ve got to plot your next step.

Solutions

The easiest way to solve this problem is if you are willing to accept an alternative to a promotion – like money. This is sometimes called a “retention reward” and it’s a bonus that is paid to employees when they deserve a promotion but one is not currently possible.

Once you realize that your deserved promotion may be delayed, you need to start to take steps to boost your value to the company. What you really want to do is to make it very easy for the company to slide you into the promotion once it becomes available. This means having a talk with your boss in order to find out if there are ways to get some of the experience that goes along with the promotion position even if you can’t get the title right now.

As with all requests like this, you do need to be careful. You don’t want the company to get too comfortable with you doing the work of the higher level position while being paid at your current lower rate.

What All Of This Means For You

The world is working against you – just when you are expecting a promotion, everything gets flipped upside down and you find your way up the career ladder blocked. These things happen and you need to find ways to deal with it.

Quitting is always an option; however, unless you have another job already lined up it’s probably not the way to go right now. Instead, ask if you can get a bonus to replace the promotion that you won’t be getting right now. At the same time see if there is any way that you can gain more experience doing the type of work that you will be doing when the promotions free up once again.

Promotions will eventually return. As a top-notch IT Leader you need to use this delay to build the skills that will ensure that you will be one of the first to get promoted once things start moving again. Take these actions now and you’ll be ready for the big day whenever it finally comes…

If your next promotion gets delayed, what steps would you take?

Click here to get automatic updates when The Accidental IT Leader Blog is updated.

What We’ll Be Talking About Next Time

As an IT leader you’ve got a lot to do. As though it wasn’t enough to stay on top of your staff keeping them happy, engaged, and productive, you are also constantly working to stay on top of all of that changing technology. It turns out that you have an additional task that you might not be taking the time to do: figuring out where your company is trying to get to.

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Posted in promotion | 2 Comments »

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